Monday, 22 October 2018

Another week of Brexit...

When, oh when will this end?

Every week the same old story. May says its makes or break, she tries to get a concession out of the EU. They don't play ball, she dreams up a concession with Olly Robbins - her own side get angry but not angry enough to do anything. Then nothing is agreed anyway and the whole story repeats the next week.

In a corporate situation May would have been replaced a while ago now. The long knives would have been out and a nice pay-off obtained with a new leader in to either change direction or just actually do something whatever that was.

But no, we are loathe the repeat the same story week after week. With EU meetings cancelled and can-kicking at the EU standard world-class levels. Worse, the alternative leaders have not thought of a plan which will work yet and neither has the opposition - hence May continues her peripatetic journey of nothingness. Then May has the audacity to say the deal, which no one will sign is 95% complete...it is beyond a joke!

Anyway, maybe just maybe something will break this cycle. I can't see who at the moment given everyone is both entrenched in their own positions and incapable of strategic or even tactical change. Will anything turn up?

To be honest no-deal then various small fixes for things like planes, etc looks cleanest. Mrs May can say that she kept trying. Neither side has to actively do something sensible, instead they can respond to specific problems (politically to act is different than to react).

Hopefully Mrs May resigns at that point - as did Cameron who did not think he could lead the country along one route having advocated another.

The civil servants designing the current trap will keep their jobs (or move to other sinecures) regardless. For the politicians involved before the next GE the scale of the sell out will become obvious and they will pay the price. Tis truly foolish of Mrs May to think that her, her party, or her countries goals are the same as those of the advisors she seems to rely on.

NI will never be fixed. The leavers (in my opinion) are right that away from border monitoring fixes any issues and there is no need for a power sharing agreement with the EU (what the EU is asking for). NI is the remainer justification for binding the UK to EU and as such remainer can not accept any other solution to the border "problem".

Let's hope something or someone turns up soon.........it's all very depressing and tedious in the extreme. We need someone (dare I say Trump-like) who will cut through the c***. Teresa May is at heart one of those bureaucratic types we are desperate to escape from which is why we voted for Brexit in the first place. She would probably do very well in Brussels as a eurocrat but doesn't seem to be the right person to get us out. We've given her enough time to get her act together and I was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt......seems I was wrong there.

What John Redwood fails to mention is this. Is favourite reposte is "Ah. They sell more to us than we sell to them."

Meaning that if they cause disruptions with our exports then we can reply with disruptions against theirs. He often says "No-one on the British side is going to cause a blockade." when Remainers express fears that there will be empty shelves. This rather neutralises the leverage he says we have - either that or there WILL be empty shelves.

I think we're a bit fucked. The EU has previous for seriously hurting member states who misbehave.

We need someone with balls of steel who will stand up to globalists within and without the EU and I don't see anyone of that discription.

Come on, E-K, chin up. Our children have a better future outside the EU than in it, even if there's pain in the short term. I'm still immensely proud of my vote.

Do you really want to be ionside the EU and treated like Greece? Do you really want what we've had since 1997 - falling real wages and rising real house prices, while the native English flee the cities?

That's not to say there are no struggles ahead - the globalists who control UK Inc (or more likely UK LLP) are still there - but the struggle against them will be easier outside the EU than in. And the time is now, before Trump is either emasculated, compromised by globalists*, or loses an election. Seize the time!

"Nought shall make us rueIf Britain to herself do rest but true."

* as witness the LNG to Germany deal, which IMHO makes little economic sense but more sense as an attack on Russia.

Brexit continues to fall apart, The brighter Tory MPs can see it is a stupid idea and beg for Referendum 2 to get them off the hook. The hand wavers are still making a big noise but lack any cojones or any plan.

Winning the 2022 election is the next calculation. With Mrs May or someone else? Which way will the old, the gammons and the young vote? But with the only opposition being Corbyn the result is assured - probably.

Election 2022 looms and with luck Mrs May is still in charge. Tory MPs are not likely to dump her for a Brexit loony when the abyss looks so deep - or will they? The EU is playing it long and the real game and suffering will be post 2022.

But with the Tories in charge, Brexit is very much their problem, indeed their long suicide note. No industrial policy, transport still a mess, education underfunded again and economic uncertainty adds to the armlock the EU has. The EU's clock ticking loudly. Parliament needs brains and all it has got is stupidity, obfuscation, delay, parchment and quill pens.

The sunny uplands are in the same place as unicorns. If there were a credible economic plan do you not think the Norwegians or the Dutch or the Germans or even the French would not be doing it right now? Brexitland == Fairyland, only not so nice.

Then the 2027 election, a mere nine years of achieving nothing away. I can hardly bear the excitement.

Jim. How does referendum 2 get the Tories off the hook?Off the hook for what? For holding referendum 1.

Which was held for political reasons. To destroy UKIP. And on that measure, was a supreme success. But by then reneging on the Referendum by having a second, loser's vote, that wins. By, what? 4%? That will enrage leavers and will leave the Tory party in a far worse place than it is in now.Politically.

Hence TM pretending to leave. whilst doing every thing she can to not actually leave very much at all.

Wool.Pull.Eyes. Strategy.Her hope must be only 10% of Brexit supporters go off on one, not voting for her again.10% of remoaners think she did the best she could have done. And so prefer her to Korbyn's Comintern.

As Lord Dobbs said on QT the other day, Brexit is a political decision,foremost. To view it any other way is to misunderstand i.

@BQ, I agree Ref 2 will solve nothing, too late for that now anyway. But some cling on to a hope. A little later on Mrs May could come on the telly and have 'A Very Serious Talk About Brexit' and dump the idea. But I doubt it, we will go through with Brexit, we are stuck with the wretched project.

As said, economics does not come into it, 'sovereignty' is the watchword. But what 'sovereignty', the ability to close the front gates a little? A problem caused by lousy housing policy and lousy industrial policy and lousy education planning - all parliament's fault. The reality is that our 'sovereignty' is worth nothing and will have to be chopped away and given away in order to keep any sort of civilised life going. A phoney diversion from reality.

Brexit will only help if one thinks a race to the bottom is what people voted for. Otherwise we might as well stay in the EU and snuggle up like pigs in a sty for mutual comfort and warmth. Neither option is pretty, but that is an economic matter about which the Brexiteers don't know or care. Never mind, British chambermaids and footmen will be plentiful.

We will be leaving the EU on 29th March 2019. There is no practicable way of holding a second referendum before then. Nor can Article 50 be revoked, other than by the unanimous agreement of the other 27 member states.

The only question now is the terms on which we leave. May -- or rather Olly Robbins and his Remainer cohorts in Downing Street and the Civil Service-- have come up with various sell-out plans, which are highly unlikely to get through Parliament.

That leaves us with No Deal. And it would be better, and truer, to start calling it a World Trade Deal. As such, it has everything to recommend it.

Jim, the project to leave the EU is wretched because those running it (who are arch Remainers to a man) have deliberately made it so. No Deal was always the likely outcome when attempting to negotiate with the myopic (real) loons at the centre of Le Projet and should have been planned for right from the off.

Our sovereignty is currently not exercised because most members of parliament do not want to exercise it and are happy to simply rubber stamp the latest EU reg. To suggest that it is worthless is, well, thick.

The EU is toast and in a far shorter timeframe than most think. It does far too much harm and not enough good.

Charlie - I'd like to agree with you that the EU is toast however I can't help but think the EU is like an antibiotic resistant venereal disease - events happen which you think should kill it, however it always survives and eventually begins to multiply again.

Anon - for the EU to survive, the Euro must be sustained. However, it cannot be sustained without enormous transfers from the rich countries to the poor, or enormous borrowing by the poor countries, which is only possible in an emergency-interest rate environment.

The Fed has grasped the nettle and IRs are normalising. It doesn't matter what the ECB does; borrowing is going to get more expensive. The Euro won't survive IR normalisation and neither will the EU.

Jim's abrupt and cynical dismissal of sovereignty tends to devalue anything he says: anyone who can be so crass, so philistine, so egregiously ignorant of the fundamentals of liberty (and of our history & culture) is barely fit to walk around unattended.

pedentry I know but important I feel - the rationale given is that the referendum was onl;y done for internal Tory politics - to help to "shoot the UKIP fox" is often trotted out. It is partly true but the context needs to be seen. There was to be new treaty which as always pushed ever closer union. Cameron could not just sign up as have al PM's since Heath, given feeling in the country.

So the referendum was not just sabout staying in the EU as was but staying in in an increasingly centralised power structure - and so the referendum was born